Site Mobile Navigation

Congress to Begin Debating A Domestic Security Agency

The federal government begins to reorganize itself in earnest this week to respond to a new world of terror and domestic unease, as Congress returns from recess to a dizzying round of votes on creating a Department of Homeland Security by summer's end.

President Bush proposed the department last month, but the labor to build it will actually take place in committee rooms around Capitol Hill, where the reorganization bill will be debated beginning on Tuesday. More than a dozen House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the various government components designated to become part of the department will have their chance to rewrite the language, often in ways that may differ sharply from the administration's vision.

Though the reassignment of security tasks from one department to another may seem bureaucratic and even trivial outside of Washington, it is considered a solemn and even historic responsibility to those doing the work. The proposed cabinet department represents the biggest reorganization of the government since the 1940's, and many say it could stand as the nation's most lasting response to the events of Sept. 11.

''This is one of the most important things I will ever get a chance to do as a senator,'' said Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, who as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee has taken on his chamber's most prominent role in creating the department. ''There are 180 different agencies dealing with homeland security that are out there on their own, uncoordinated and undirected. We are not just bringing them together, but we are giving them a whole new responsibility to protect this nation.''

Many in Congress are concerned that the changes ahead will represent more than just a different phone number or letterhead for the agencies they oversee. If the Coast Guard, for example, moves from the Transportation Department to the Homeland Security Department, will its basic mission of ensuring maritime safety and mobility shift more toward defense? Several coastal-state representatives are preparing to fight such a move. Members from farm states are similarly worried about moving the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service out of the Agriculture Department.

Several lawmakers are angry about weakened civil service protections in the new department, and Congressional appropriations leaders, accustomed to deciding how the government will spend its money, have protested the administration's proposal that the department be able to shift money among its divisions without their approval.

The most serious responsibility of the new department, of course, will be learning of and preventing terrorist attacks, and it is in the area of intelligence sharing that Congress will be devoting the most scrutiny.

The White House proposed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency send their reports and analysis of raw intelligence data to the new department for further analysis of potential threats, and House Republican leaders say they are prepared to accept an essentially passive arrangement that would leave most of the raw intelligence in the hands of the agencies that gathered it.

''Someone is going to have to make the case that allowing the new department to collect raw intelligence is worth the risk,'' an aide to a House Republican leader said. ''We don't really see the benefits of doing that.''

But many legislators, particularly on the Senate side, have been unhappy with the performance of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and want to create a requirement that the raw data, like tapes and transcripts of conversations with informants, be turned over to Homeland Security.

Mr. Lieberman said he would press for language to create a much more active intelligence division within the department, able to demand raw data and not just request it, as the administration has proposed. The department would also be able to require the F.B.I. and C.I.A. to perform various tasks under his proposal, language that will probably not be welcome at two agencies accustomed to autonomy.

''It's not that we want the department to have its own agents, but it has to have the best intelligence analysis and dissemination capability that we can achieve,'' Mr. Lieberman said. ''That means it has to be able to task the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., tell them to get such-and-such a piece of information, or check out this port of entry.''

The nature of these debates will mean that the internal reorganization of the F.B.I. and C.I.A., which had been under discussion in Congress before the president's proposal, will be put off for several months, Mr. Lieberman and other legislators said, possibly until next year. There is no point in discussing the future role of those agencies, they said, until it is clear how strong a role the new department will play, particularly with some members of Congress eager to create a domestic intelligence agency that has long been resisted in Washington.

If there is strong disagreement between the House and Senate on issues like intelligence sharing, it is possible that the self-imposed memorial deadline of Sept. 11, originally proposed by the Democrats, may be missed. With Congress scheduled to be in recess for most of August, several legislative staff members and outside experts have begun to worry that a major new cabinet department cannot be created so quickly without the risk of mistakes and haphazard planning.

At the same time these issues are being debated, Congress will also be taking up several other high-profile bills this week, including the proposal to move nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada and a plan to tighten accounting rules to help prevent future business scandals. Both houses are behind on basic appropriations. But even Democratic leaders say they are still hoping to meet their goal on domestic security.

''We are always looking for the right balance between speed and efficiency, or speed and success,'' Representative Richard A. Gephardt, the House minority leader, said last week. ''But I don't think you get anywhere by saying: 'Oh, this is all too complicated. It's going to take us four years to do it.' ''

''They cleaned up ground zero in a record amount of time,'' Mr. Gephardt said. ''They built the Pentagon back in a record amount of time. And they did not do that by saying, 'Oh, gee, this is a hard job, it's going to take us forever.' ''

This week, a dozen House committees will begin editing the language of the bill. Next week they will turn their work over to a committee that will decide what kind of department the full House will vote on. That special committee, headed by Representative Dick Armey, Republican of Texas, the majority leader, has invited several cabinet secretaries to testify on Thursday about the nature of the global threat.

A smaller number of Senate committees will also take up the proposal, led by Mr. Lieberman's panel. Both houses hope to take floor votes on the new agency before the August recess, and will work out any differences in conference committee when members return after Labor Day.